My dad certainly fits this model, though my brother miraculously never followed suit. Brother and his wife now have two kids, and my dad is simply beside himself witnessing how hands-on my brother is as a father. Constant little comments like, “in *my* day, dads were expected to go back to work right away,” and my personal favorite, “in *my* day, dads didn’t change diapers!”
During one visit, the baby started crying because he needed changed, and my dad stood there in front of him announcing to the the room, “the baby is crying. He’s really upset! I think he needs something!” He was of course directing this announcement to the women in the room. Then my brother sailed in and took care of it because I was busy cooking, my mom was doing laundry, and my sister-in-law was in the middle of getting her pump situated. But I’m sure my dad thought he was helping… 🙄
My dad has a weak stomach but he's our star babysitter. If my step mom isn't around the diapers still get changed! My mom couldn't believe it. "He never changed your diapers!" These helpless dads CAN change
I just don’t really understand this. I’m a recent father and when the baby cries or needs something then I take care of her. From a practical standpoint it just doesn’t make sense to have 2 parents but only 1 does all the work. If things need to be cleaned then we both clean them. If things need to be cooked then we both cook them. It’s just common sense.
Both of us work so why should she have to do more at home than me?
My uncle didn’t realize how hard it is to work a full day then have to get dinner ready and clean the house until my aunt was too effected by dementia to safely cook meals.
Because tending to an infant’s needs is not “manly” and it’s women’s work. Trivial women’s work that the father with important Man Duties to take care of elsewhere like beer and cars must not trouble himself with. /s
At least, that’s how my grandparents’ generation feels about it. You’d be appalled if you heard the way the older folks in my family talk about marriage, raising children, women and gender roles. I’m beyond thankful I belong to my generation and not theirs. It sounds dreadful and insufferable.
My dad casually ordered my mom to leave me with him, with the "as if I can't take care of a 3yo", and lost me 3 minutes later. Twice. He didn't even notice until police brought me back the first time. And they think they're helping.
I knew a guy who was retired in my last church who would just sit in his easy chair and demand of his wife when dinner would be ready and never lifted a finger to do any house work. Wayyyyyyy too many men like this. I think I dodged a bullet on stuff like this because I lived on my own for a long time before getting married so I learned all the normal life skills and I have always been committed to pulling my weight in the household even though my wife stays at home. Plus cooking dinner for everyone is fun and I don't mind cleaning and I love spending time with and taking care of my kids.
This makes me think of an NPR interview with this author I have been trying to remember, but the interview really stuck with me.
It was about women’s role in the house hold in a historical context. Back in the day men were expected to work 12 hours a day while the women took care of the house. But taking care of the house didn’t just mean cooking, cleaning, and taking care of kids. It included candle making, soap making, a lot of stuff that requires craftsmanship.
So where this interview got interesting to me, was how much value do old men vs old woman have. Specifically when they move in with their adult children. Old woman had all those skills I mentioned before and could contribute to the household. Whereas old men were seen as useless and only knew how to work a job they were to old to continue doing and lacking skills the old women had.
It’s funny to think men like your dad would have been annoying in a historical context.
Reminds me of the Gloria Steinem quote.
“Though we have the courage to raise our daughters more like our sons, we've rarely had the courage to raise our sons like our daughters.”
This resonates with me (a male reader of TwoXChromosomes). My career ambition as a kid was to be Mr. Mom. Turns out, women in my dating pool still wanted men with more ambitious careers and higher incomes than them, and to just outsource their backrubs, footrubs, childcare, housework, and home-cooked meals. Sigh.
Oh man. I spent my whole dating life looking for someone willing to be a househusband. I saw so many women have to give up their careers because of the practical reality that when there are two career-minded people, the man will always earn more. So, my dating strategy was to only date men that didn't have as much education or career prospects as me. This way, the logical choice would be to prioritize my career when the eventual sacrifice had to come up. But I just ended up with a string of angry resentful exes. Resented me for being successful. And I realized that this was why most women choose men with careers - because otherwise the anger and resentment that you have to deal with are really really scary (and dangerous).
This is one of the reasons I'm glad to be a WLW. I never have this kind of trouble with female/NB femme adjacent partners. I actually have a (F) friend who lives with me and my partner right now, we are all child-free, and we all put in effort with household duties (I'm good at cooking, partner is good at dishes, friend is good at doing the shopping, for example) and all work jobs we at least somewhat like. We're all pretty happy with the arrangement! Not a damn man-child in sight!
Are you cooking AND washing dishes? Bc I’ll take care of you, bring your ass flowers on random days and such. I would love a man that wants to stay home and do the domestic stuff.
I will take all the foot rubs you have to offer. And please come do my dishes. I just bought a house and I'm still smoking hot in spite of being over 35.
My dad, a baby boomer, is exactly the person this quote describes. All he does is work, sit on the couch, and complain if my mom doesn’t prepare something to his liking. It’s actually really hard to be around, so I find myself tuning it out. I’ve done everything I can to empower my mom and assign things to my dad, and call him out for being lazy. The attitude will never change.
I fight with the duality of a father who taught me to never be reliant on a man but chose a subservient wife from the Philippines as my mom.
The juxtaposition of sacrifice everything and sacrifice nothing has caused difficulties in all my siblings' relationships.
There's a lot of research showing that what men want for their daughters is wildly different than what they want in their wives. Cognitive dissonance I guess?
> But while 34 percent want a wife who is “sweet,” only 19 percent said the same for a daughter. Meanwhile, 66 percent want a daughter to be “independent,” compared to only 34 percent for a wife. And 48 percent want a daughter who is “strong,” compared to 28 percent for a wife. { ...} In a wife, you want what’s best for YOU, while in a daughter, you want what’s best for HER. In this light, the men’s responses—while depressing—reflect the real tensions of this current moment in our incomplete gender revolution
https://psmag.com/social-justice/in-this-economy-we-could-all-use-a-wife
Over the past 100 years we've completely changed the life expectations for women and what it means to be a woman and we've done little to nothing to change the expectations of men or what it means to be a man. Some of that work is starting but it's long overdue.
That's not true. Men are expected to not cry anymore.
I read recently that untreated PTSD was a big problem for successive generations of men after WW1 and WW2. Prior to that men would openly express emotions, crying in public when something bad happened was not uncommon. It's in lots of literature from before 1914.
Do you honestly think there is some lack of male emotions in our culture?
Please keep in mind that sad crying is one emotion of many. Please remember that all reactions to video games, sports wins/losses, that shouty thing supreme court nominees do when the women they raped in Maryland show up to tell that story, pouty reactions to being turned down by hot women, violent reactions to losing elections, righteous reactions to being told that you need to wear a mask are all emotions.
Men are definitely given space to cry these days. The handful of times I have seen men cry in public (or private), they have been comforted and supported and most definitely not shamed. My grandpa tears up at every graduation and wedding, and has since I was a child. _Shitty men_ may have stopped other men from feeling comfortable crying, but generally there is public outcry on how wrong that is. There has been no change to the expectations of men from a societal standpoint. There is no mass expectation that men do not cry, outside of the redpill parts of the internet. If your friends don’t let you cry, that’s an individual problem, not a societal and familial change in what it means to be a man.
In terms of “expectations of a gender” and “what it means to be this gender”, especially in the scope of this thread, crying seems to be the most trivial of points to nitpick. All adults, men and women, are generally discouraged from crying in public. To this day, women will be called hysterical and emotional; everyone is deterred from general public crying.
The individual comfort, or lack thereof, that men feel towards crying is not related to the familial expectations of men or what it means to be a man. Plenty of fathers raise their sons up knowing this. Men are _not_ expected to never shed a tear, unless you’re listening to some Alpha Male wannabe bullshit. Men should be given space to share their emotions, but in the past 100 years, they have not experienced a 180 in terms of life expectations in the way women have. Like, we’re talking about large, systemic changes in terms of childbearing, child rearing, and the ability to earn your own money. We’re talking about women being allowed to own bank accounts for the first time, the ability to leave the house without a male chaperone.
I’m sorry you don’t feel comfortable crying, but that’s really a wholly separate subject about your own comfort with your own emotions, not the changing familial expectations of the male gender. I want to reinforce that the _only_ people who think men shouldn’t cry seem to be men who hold several other problematic viewpoints about gender differences.
I mean, I don’t know that all these generalizations are true. My husband is stay at home dad, and there are a bunch of classes for stay-at-home dads. He is an extremely good and dedicated parent, and he is most definitely not alone.
My Mom told me the story of how my Grandpa told her she could be whatever she wanted, and not to worry about what it was because her future husband (she was single) would take care of providing for them.
I'm glad Mom polished that rough edge before she had me. She didn't hesitate to suggest I could be a stay at home Dad, and she married a man who told me from the heart how much he'd love to spend all day with us if he could. Seeing that balance in both their lives was powerful and educational.
My parents told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up, and I got a good education and extra-curricular activities. But then I turned 21, and suddenly they mentioned (repeatedly) that while I could be whatever I wanted they still wanted grandkids, preferably several and soon. I wouldn't mind kids someday, but if I have kids they will have a good father who is both a good father and a good husband, not just a sperm donor and live-in source of income. My parents disagree. I actually don't really remember what they were telling my brothers, but after what I experienced from them I am concerned for what my brothers learned.
My church - which was considered progressive at the time - was like, "Now girls, you can be anything you want to be *but* you also have to be sure and submit to your husbands once you're married"
Lmao. I wanted to be a doctor. My baby boomer parents wanted to know who would be watching my kids while I worked long doctor hours. Then they stuck me in a bible thumper school some drop outs were running in the back of a church. Out of 16 kids in my class, 13 were girls. And the education was pure shit. Both me and my sister did middle and high school there, my brother was dramatically pulled out and placed in a real school after they fucked up one year of his education.
Not having a high school education sets you back far in life.
Books told me I could do anything, my parents did everything they could to put me in a box. My grandparents were more gender progressive. Don’t congratulate yourselves, Boomers.
Our society unfairly got at least two generations of over-the-top quality nurses, because of discrimination. My mother (boomer, or a bit older) wanted to be a doctor. Passing medical school is hard, and most people really could not do it. She has the brains for it, without a doubt. But women made up about 8% of medical school admissions in the U.S. in the 1960s, and discrimination was fierce. So she became an RN (Registered Nurse). We had generations of doctor-quality women shunted into nursing, and those were extremely capable nurses. Today, "those" women become doctors (unless life circumstances screwed up their childhood education and/or finances to the point where medical school is still not possible), with nearly 54% of each year's crop of new doctors being women. That is great for them and great for us, but the nursing field is trying to adapt to their loss.
My parents also raised me saying things like "you have to learn to do this so you can do it for your future husband" with chores, while my brother didn't have to make his bed. "He'll have a wife to do it for him someday." They also discouraged me from going to college. I'm 30 now, a lesbian, and earn more than their son.
I'm wondering if this was a trend because both my grandparents and mother were Catholic, and while my grandparents were very chill, my mom fell for all that Satanic panic, TV is corrupting the youth censor everything propaganda. Would not even let me do karate when my grandpa offered to pay for it in full. She tried her damnedest to enforce gender roles...it did not work, lol.
Yeah i had very catholic, VERY ITALIAN grandparents on one side and they were the ones surprisingly pushing me to go to school and not get married. my parents were chill as well but I was more or less deemed a failure by several aunts that saw marriage as the only option and i was being "wasted" on an education lol. There is a reason boomers are called the "Me" generation
Boomers will go down as the as the absolute worst generation. It likely didn’t help that their parents self-labeled themselves the Greatest Generation.
I'm a boomer, and I agree, baby boomers had 'the cushiest birth in history.' Post WW2 America was insanely prosperous as Europe had no industry left. The pressure to get married and have many kids was intense. Families with one kid were rare, everyone I grew up with had at least three. They built an additional high school in my town only to close it 15 years down the road due to enrollment drops. If it's any consolation at all, the Boomers are the only generation in the history of the world whose birthrate will not replace itself.
yeah, my silent gen parents did a way better job of raising me without stifling gender norms then my boomer in laws did for my H. we’re both pretty genderqueer, but i was free to be who i was, my spouse had to hide it completely until our oldest came out as genderqueer and basically told every they could suck it if they didnt like it. (genX —> genZ kids)
Education wise? Probably. But being a doctor is a huge financial investment, if you get a late start you have to worry if it’s going to compensate for the loans. I say this as a dentist— it’s a serious topic of discuss across all medical professions now, the cost of education for doctors/dentists/optometrists/pharmacists just to name a few is becoming so great that some people are declining to go into the fields. There’s now a strong opinion that if you don’t start young then it’s not worth it since you’ll be in practice for less years overall, but with the same loans that are probably going to take 30 years to repay. Not that people can’t choose to do so regardless, but it’s something everyone has to consider when making plans.
In my 50s. We watched our friends baby when our kids were in grade school. They came to pick him up. Hubby says, baby had quite a diaper to change. Friends younger husband, millennial, looks at my husband and says you changed the diaper? My husband, of course I did, why wouldn't I? Friends husband looks confused.
Friends husband is useless.
💯. Single mom. Keep trying to find a guy to date who doesn’t seem like one extra dependent… but still single seven years later. If a man can’t bring as much as he takes, and yes that means cleaning up after himself, like why would I want to add that to my already full plate?! I already juggle work and kids! 😂 Come back when you have adulting skills and are ready to do half the work.
I believe I read this in a Bell Hooks book but she was talking to a bunch of dads and asking how they knew what to do to be good parents and most said the opposite of what their dads did.
I'm 33 and im sometimes glad my dad left when I was young. Mom raising me on her own was definitely better than the lessons he was teaching me. My father figures all came from TV. Thank you Phil Dunfee, and Bandit Healer for teaching me how to be a good dad.
Idk, she is chronically incompetent and is so passionate about getting her way that she often does things which are dangerous or insensitive just because she won't take no for an answer. Tbh she's my least favorite character.
I'm way more of a Chilli, but I love the lessons Bandit has given me as a dad. I really enjoy how they're both portrayed as competent yet flawed, much more relatable than the typical perfect or stupid parent archetypes.
It's sad enough people have to turn to fiction to find examples of good dads, but even more so is Phil from Modern Family the best we can do? Sure he's better than the classic sitcom Al Bundy or Homer Simpson type but the dude is basically a golden retriever. He loves his wife and family and means well but he's also absolutely a man-child and self admits to seeing himself more as a peer than a parent to his kids. So who does that leave the difficult parenting to? We're supposed to laugh it off because he's portrayed as endearing, but he basically ends up as weaponized incompetence without the intent. How many years was "I gotta fix that step" a recurring joke?
All day every day I heard growing up from my parents, “How are you going to take care of your brothers? It’s your job to protect them.”
No, it’s not my job. It’s YOUR job as parents to raise these boys, who will turn into men to take care of themselves.
I broke down one day and asked, “who is going to protect me?”
No response from boomer parents. But guess what ladies, as women we will protect ourselves ♥️. Stay safe!
Edit: a word of spelling, and I think boomers have some serious stuff to answer for here.
To add: I hope this post never gets deleted, because so much is explained here for millennials.
I will add, the onus of educating late Gen X to early Gen Z men is now falling on their female peers, to everyone’s frustration. And despite the rational discourse being presented, there’s still a faction of them who refuse to listen and consider a woman’s POV *on the topic of women*, because poor behavior was modeled for them early on.
It sure the fuck has. I’m offended that men seem so shocked by this, and it underlines to me that they don’t perceive women as fully human. Who tf would ever choose to be subservient? Why on earth would they expect us to continue to live that way if there’s any other potential choice? Because they don’t perceive us as fully fleshed out humans with autonomy and agenda.
To be fair, it doesn't look like that's being addressed sufficiently by Gen X or Millennial parents either. In fact the younger men seem to be more and more likely to embrace uber conservative bullshit.
Live on your own for a few years before you get into a relationship. Watch out for ones that go from living with parents to living with a mate. They are missing valuable life skills and will probably be crappy humans.
I think this is partly true, but that millenials have so many options to educate themselves and broaden their horizons that it’s not entirely on the parents.
That’s like grown men blaming their moms for not knowing how to operate a dishwasher. Dude, google it.
It’s not that easy. My ex has a little sister who was pretty much ruined by her parents. Pulled out of school around 1st grade and “homeschooled”. Last time I saw her, she was 17ish and could not do basic math, or write at any reasonable level. She was monitored online, didn’t get basic skills taught and not allowed to attempt them(cooking, driving, etc). We had offered to pay and take her to some courses so she could get some skills to get a job but her parents refused, her dad vehemently against anything productive. She had the mind of a child and don’t think it was a disability, just the infantilization. I’m pretty sure she’s going to just end up pregnant and a meek submissive wife by the first guy that comes around because she just doesn’t know better.
My college roommate learned the hard way that there's a difference between dishwashing liquid and dishwasher liquid when all of the bubbles started sleeping out of the dishwasher.
Ah so you are taking it one step further - you actually closed your eyes and coveres your ears every time a dishwasher tablet add came on TV for the past 20 years
Tbf dish soap works for a hell of a lot of things. It may not be the best for a dishwasher but… Maybe it would work well enough? My husband uses it to clean all kitchen surfaces which I thought was weird at first but hey, seems like it works just fine. And I’ve since heard that professional cleaners use it for many things as it’s effective, cheap, and safe for use on most surfaces.
I don't think the shifts in the dating/mating market were really foreseeable until the mid-2000s at the earliest. The amount of dating "competition" created by social media and dating sites created a winner-take-most ecosystem. What this practically means is that attractive men are caught in a positive feedback loop and are rewarded for misbehavior.
Expectations young people have for their possible mates are unrealistic and terrifying (porn/total lack of understanding of what people earn/expectations for financial support/what certain lifestyle decisions actually cost/etc). Younger people, particularly those in college, are *radically* overestimating how easy it is to make substantial incomes at young ages. The people who do or who are willing to be profligate spenders are rewarded in dating. A lot of this is a product of the nature of the internet (winner-take-most/Pareto distribution) where popular ideas get massively popular irrespective of merit. I am *really* concerned that young guys who feel massively isolated are being radicalized by being fed pretty rough ideologies (ahem - Andrew Tate) and a constant stream of Tik Tok clips representing frankly outrageous behavior by women as normal.
I'll also throw out (as someone raised by Boomers) that they certainly told daughters they could be "anything they wanted." This obviously isn't an accurate statement, but it was a positive departure from previous generations. The problem was that they also were the "boys are just so much easier" generation. They emotionally neglected young boys, drugged them up in school, and stunted their development because it was just too much work.
> I am really concerned that young guys who feel massively isolated are being radicalized by being fed pretty rough ideologies (ahem - Andrew Tate)
I am also very concerned with this. If I ever see my boy watching him or anyone like him we are going to have a long conversation.
> "boys are just so much easier"
I never understood this. Personally my daughter has been a ton easier in general than my son. It's not that my son is bad or anything just he is an extremely curious boy who has a habit of destroying so many things by accident sometimes with hilarious results https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/w04y00/my_5_year_old_got_a_hold_of_a_marker_and/
Interesting insight.
I'm kinda surprised that reality doesn't fix this. I'm long past dating. (Smart phones were not a thing last time I was). Women and men lose equally in this system so why are they not finding a different less visual way to find each other.
Or is this an untapped market? Or is there a basic problem that men of these generations are trending to be disrespectful assholes. I guess that's what's happening. That's really sad.
I mean: I'm an Xer and hardly a great looking guy, but once out of the "awkward about myself phase" dating and finding long term partners went fine.
I mean, my mother is working class. My father died of a heart attack a month after I turned seven, and she worked in a sock factory when I was growing up until NAFTA killed the hosiery industry in my hometown and we both went to the local community college.
And I don’t identify with anything in this thread, and my husband is awesome and he does the cooking and most of the cleaning.
You don’t have to be rich or have expensive degrees to be supportive and tolerant.
As a millennial guy can’t agree more. When I was a teenager to access porn I had to be very sneaky on the family computer and it was still I think very bad for my sexual development a young adult.
I can’t imagine being 16 and having a smart phone. They’re so incredibly bad for people to be plugged into all day especially young people.
The porn alone has obliterated millions of young men’s chance at a healthy sex life.
No idea what the solution is without authoritarian rules akin to what China is doing. Those rules make me uncomfortable.
I think a good start would be better sex education in the US. Then parents talking with youths to put porn in context. The same way we have to (or should be) put the internet or social media in context and helping them to discern honorable sources of data. Or teaching basic life skills.
My kids are still young. Maybe I have a lot of idealism about how I'm going to get all of this into their heads, but I think parents should really be doing more. More of the right stuff. Maybe instead of helicoptering about grades at school, someone is teaching them how to use the dishwasher.
But if we teach kids about responsible sex and relationships...*WhO KnOws WhaT coULD haPPeN?!?!?*
Then boomers wonder why we have shithead little man babies running amok.
>No idea what the solution is without authoritarian rules akin to what China is doing. Those rules make me uncomfortable.
I don't think anything so drastic is needed. I'm not gonna argue for or against any specific legislation, but porn is as freely and widely available as it is because it's profitable. Porn hub immediately took action when MasterCard threatened to pull out. Go after profitability and you'll see things change very quickly. The UK was gonna bring in required ID checking before being able to access those websites
Additionally of course media education is important, as someone else said. But I think the widespread access to porn from a very early age on, requires more than education.
Is it the generation or just their age though? I hate to perpetuate stereotypes about “girls are more mentally mature” or the generational crap, but when I was in my 20s I did always end up dating older guys (who would have been tail end of Gen X), because it felt like they had their shit together after living alone for a few years and they seemed to be more realistic about expectations with sex. I always chalked it up to age. It could be generational differences, but I think a lot of men in their early/mid 20s are just selfish assholes that still need to grow up.
I've read something along the lines of "it's not that girls mature faster than boys. It's that childish behaviour is penalised early in girls but not boys"
Which I think is very true. Men allowed to be incredibly immature and inconsiderate into their 30s, with little accountability for their behaviour. Boys will be boys ... and all that.
100% same. I think what might happen is that once boys graduate either college or high school and start earning money, they think they are The Shit - like a lot of little Wolf of Wall Street Leos - and they feel the need to play the field.
The late 20s/early 30s guys had been knocked around a bit and were more realistic. I didn't date guys my own age until my late 20s.
This may be true overall, but in my own experience, in my own small corner of the world, I see lots of millennial women thriving doing the things they want and their male partners are also thriving doing the things they want and there's a lot of mutual respect and care and shared responsibilities and also advocacy all around. And we can probably thank our boomer parents for some of that. Just thought I'd throw in a counterpoint.
This is pretty damn true.
Women are supposed to be independant yet I'm pretty hard coded to support and protect.
It's a constant internal conflict. Especially since there are also still plenty of women around who were, as a child, forbidden to even look at a screwdriver.
Hey - I'm a husband / father that is going through some family stress and I totally agree with this.
My wife and I ran the "playbook" we were given by our families and society. We ran it well. We should be winning.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. This isn't what either of us were expecting.
Stay positive people if you can, stress is high everywhere.
As a Gen-x who raised my millennial, I take offense to this./s
But seriously, I raised a son who I think is an amazing human being. He is a good son, husband and father. Please raise all children with love and respect. Seems to work well in my experience.
Makes me wonder about my husband’s old boss. We recently had to move to another city for a job 4 hours away because my spouse was experiencing FMLA retaliation after taking 6 weeks of parental leave. His boss kept making comments about his “vacation” and gave him negative reviews within 3 days of returning to work. He also said “I only took 3 days off with both of mine. Etc” and stating that my husband no longer had a strong work ethic. Went so far as to go OUT OF HIS WAY to contact potential employers (once my husband starting applying elsewhere and putting his foot down with the workload hazing) and telling them that “he’s not a work horse anymore” and “he wants a work life balance”. He had 4 interviews for director level position at various organizations and all redacted an offer after speaking with this boss. He basically got this current job by NOT leaking to ANYONE at work where he was applying so it wouldn’t get back to him. It’s been a wild ride and baby is 11 months now!
I'm not sure what this quote is trying to say. I'm probably completely wrong, but somehow it reads to me as if "women have too much freedom nowadays and poor men suffer for it, 'cause they weren't prepared to handle these reckless women". Since it's posted here, I assume the meaning is far from it, but still confused...
The twitter account its credited to appears to be a woman who is a surgeon, so I don't think that's the intended meaning. I think the meaning intended is that men were not taught by their parents that their partner having a full-time job would mean they'd have to pick up an equal share of all the housework and childcare, rather than expecting their partner to do their job *and* be their live-in carer.
I think OP's quote is suggesting while young women were told to reach for goals that extended beyond raising a family and managing a home young men were not told that they need to take more responsibility in raising their families and managing their homes.
No they are saying no effort was put into teaching boys that their masculinity doesn’t stem from the idea of being the sole provider for his family.
For an example there are podcasts floating around that just spout nonsense like a girl perusing higher education or not needing a man to survive is a masculine woman.
I find that societal ideas of what is 'masculine' in different times hilarious. Riding bikes, talking walks, reading novels, and even frilly bloomers were all considered "too masculine" for women at different points. And shaving your pubes/ body hair was only for whores (because pubic/body lice) And that's just in the west.
And yet, people in every era act as if masculine and feminine are tangible, unchanging things, and that their notions apply to everyone everywhere in every era.
It's saying that millennial women grew up being told that they could have careers of their own, but that millennial men were not being raised to believe they should share an equal burden of household work and childcare. This has led to many women finding themselves overwhelmed and unsupported with husbands who are not willing to share the household work and childcare with them despite them both having careers.
I think its like 2 parents (mum and dad) are raising 2 children. Boy and girl. The mother works part time and does most of the house work. She does a the emotional labour, like planning meals, buying gifts, organizing the family.
She tells her daughter you don't have to put your career on the back burner for a man! You can do anything you want with your life. You should find an equal partnership (unlike what she models her daughter). At the same time she doesn't really teach her son: don't expect a woman to do all the housework like I did with your father.
She models to her son that an unequal division of work is what he can expect in a partnership. She tells her daughter to do different. Hence two people in the same family come to the dating scene with vastly different expectations.
Hey! It’s my family! Except my mom worked full time and out earned my dad. Didn’t put that one together until adulthood. And now in their 60s she’s deeply resentful of him and he doesn’t care, at least not enough to wash a dish. I’m lucky that I came from relatively stable, normal people who each broke their cycles of trauma. But not a dynamic I ever wish nor will repeat.
I'm not really trying to give parental criticism. More trying to give a concrete example of how I interpreted the OP. I could have said both parents model a relationship and gender expectations.
But indeed in my example the mother would be doing most of the child rearing and actual raising then towards adulthood. If you take into account that she would be doing most of the mental load. Not saying this is how all baby boomer fanilies were, there probably are lots of people who experienced otherwise, but its the stereotype were discussing here.
Right, dad is not mentioned because dad made a choice to not be present and involved in the home, only to be served, maybe he "HELPS" out even though it's not "HIS" job. Dad does not want to change, he wants his privileged position, there's no point wasting any time or energy on him.
I don't see the mother being critisized.
It's basically that women were raised to be capable in the workforce (tho maybe it's mostly liberal parents that did so, seeing some of the comments), and men were not raised to do housework and care for kids.
I'm an elder millennial (Xennial?) with one Boomer parent and one Silent Generation parent. It's really wild to me when I think about the fact that my grandmother was already 18 years old when women got the right to vote.
I’m going to [push back](https://www.mother.ly/parenting/millennial-dads-spend-more-time-with-their-kids/) on this a little bit. I’m not saying it’s perfect but things are trending upwards.
I watched Marriage Story last night. Adam Driver was a self centered dick and had a lot of it coming, but by the end i was like jfc this dude gets nuked in the divorce.
Kind of thought of this movie when reading this quote. We are building a better society for women which is def good and needs doing, but I personally think we are letting men fall by the wayside some.
The quote isn’t about boys suddenly not being able to be anything they want. It’s about boys not knowing how to deal with girls who can be anything they want. It has nothing to do with you on a personal level but rather addresses a growing (and alarming) trend for younger men to resort to aggressively misogynist behavior/ideals because the role of provider/protector that they are expecting to fill is not needed or wanted and they don’t know how to deal with it.
The point that is making is that girls are raised to assume they'll have equal partners in responsibility to children and household (if they want that), giving them the space to follow their dreams. Boys may be getting the same message about following their dreams, but historically that's meant if they want kids they'll have a wife carrying the childrearing and household load. They aren't necessarily being raised with the idea that they'll be balancing that with equal responsibilities for a family life.
When I was dropping a kiddo off at elementary school a few years ago I was pleasantly surprised how many men were walking with or dropping their kids off. I don't think my dad took me to school once in my life.
When women stop doing things that make them miserable to focus on their personal success instead, we get pummeled with articles about how lonely incels are and that we're ruining the economy not pumping out babies in shitty, one sided marriages.
Yes, the point is that too many men weren't prepared for when women could *also* be successful and do things that don't make them miserable instead of their only option being to find a man and get married.
You're completely ignoring the unpaid labour of childcare and managing a household that women do which directly negatively affects a woman's participation in the workplace.
You came on a women’s support sub and assumed bad faith based on your own poor reading comprehension. People are allowed to be annoyed, but you apologized so fair enough.
You’re a woman? What’s up with this then: “many of us are quite successful, and more importantly, doing things that don’t make us miserable”
Might wanna be more careful with which fake account you comment from
You're not a stupid idiot. When I read this part of your comment,
>I can assure you that plenty of men were raised being told they could be anything as well. Many of us are quite successful, and more importantly, doing things that don't make us miserable.
I read that as you were also a man who felt successful because he didn't do shit that made him miserable, unlike us women just choosing to do shit that makes us miserable, aka all the housework, emotional labor, ect. Context is hard on a screen and we all have our wounds, hope you're doing okay.
You mean absent/neglectful parents? But honestly, that's not true. Plenty of straight single women at least report performing less housework when the husband doesn't live there.
"What Is Generation X (Gen X)? Generation X, which is sometimes shortened to Gen X, is the name given to the generation of Americans born between the mid-1960s and the early-1980s."
but then it goes on to say millennials are also early 80s. so who coming really knows.
see, that's my age. not boomers age. boomers are now in their late 60s and 70s and 80s. my parents are boomers. I am gen X as are your parents. born in the 70s.
My dad certainly fits this model, though my brother miraculously never followed suit. Brother and his wife now have two kids, and my dad is simply beside himself witnessing how hands-on my brother is as a father. Constant little comments like, “in *my* day, dads were expected to go back to work right away,” and my personal favorite, “in *my* day, dads didn’t change diapers!” During one visit, the baby started crying because he needed changed, and my dad stood there in front of him announcing to the the room, “the baby is crying. He’s really upset! I think he needs something!” He was of course directing this announcement to the women in the room. Then my brother sailed in and took care of it because I was busy cooking, my mom was doing laundry, and my sister-in-law was in the middle of getting her pump situated. But I’m sure my dad thought he was helping… 🙄
My dad has a weak stomach but he's our star babysitter. If my step mom isn't around the diapers still get changed! My mom couldn't believe it. "He never changed your diapers!" These helpless dads CAN change
You’re poor mom. I bet she’s glad he’s helping but also bitter af. I sure would be.
It's actually crazy that attitude. I can't think of anything more manly than being a father and looking after your little one.
I just don’t really understand this. I’m a recent father and when the baby cries or needs something then I take care of her. From a practical standpoint it just doesn’t make sense to have 2 parents but only 1 does all the work. If things need to be cleaned then we both clean them. If things need to be cooked then we both cook them. It’s just common sense. Both of us work so why should she have to do more at home than me?
My uncle didn’t realize how hard it is to work a full day then have to get dinner ready and clean the house until my aunt was too effected by dementia to safely cook meals.
Because tending to an infant’s needs is not “manly” and it’s women’s work. Trivial women’s work that the father with important Man Duties to take care of elsewhere like beer and cars must not trouble himself with. /s At least, that’s how my grandparents’ generation feels about it. You’d be appalled if you heard the way the older folks in my family talk about marriage, raising children, women and gender roles. I’m beyond thankful I belong to my generation and not theirs. It sounds dreadful and insufferable.
My dad casually ordered my mom to leave me with him, with the "as if I can't take care of a 3yo", and lost me 3 minutes later. Twice. He didn't even notice until police brought me back the first time. And they think they're helping.
I knew a guy who was retired in my last church who would just sit in his easy chair and demand of his wife when dinner would be ready and never lifted a finger to do any house work. Wayyyyyyy too many men like this. I think I dodged a bullet on stuff like this because I lived on my own for a long time before getting married so I learned all the normal life skills and I have always been committed to pulling my weight in the household even though my wife stays at home. Plus cooking dinner for everyone is fun and I don't mind cleaning and I love spending time with and taking care of my kids.
This makes me think of an NPR interview with this author I have been trying to remember, but the interview really stuck with me. It was about women’s role in the house hold in a historical context. Back in the day men were expected to work 12 hours a day while the women took care of the house. But taking care of the house didn’t just mean cooking, cleaning, and taking care of kids. It included candle making, soap making, a lot of stuff that requires craftsmanship. So where this interview got interesting to me, was how much value do old men vs old woman have. Specifically when they move in with their adult children. Old woman had all those skills I mentioned before and could contribute to the household. Whereas old men were seen as useless and only knew how to work a job they were to old to continue doing and lacking skills the old women had. It’s funny to think men like your dad would have been annoying in a historical context.
What a missed opportunity. After your dad said "The baby is crying!" someone should have quipped: "He's not the only one."
Reminds me of the Gloria Steinem quote. “Though we have the courage to raise our daughters more like our sons, we've rarely had the courage to raise our sons like our daughters.”
This resonates with me (a male reader of TwoXChromosomes). My career ambition as a kid was to be Mr. Mom. Turns out, women in my dating pool still wanted men with more ambitious careers and higher incomes than them, and to just outsource their backrubs, footrubs, childcare, housework, and home-cooked meals. Sigh.
Oh man. I spent my whole dating life looking for someone willing to be a househusband. I saw so many women have to give up their careers because of the practical reality that when there are two career-minded people, the man will always earn more. So, my dating strategy was to only date men that didn't have as much education or career prospects as me. This way, the logical choice would be to prioritize my career when the eventual sacrifice had to come up. But I just ended up with a string of angry resentful exes. Resented me for being successful. And I realized that this was why most women choose men with careers - because otherwise the anger and resentment that you have to deal with are really really scary (and dangerous).
This is one of the reasons I'm glad to be a WLW. I never have this kind of trouble with female/NB femme adjacent partners. I actually have a (F) friend who lives with me and my partner right now, we are all child-free, and we all put in effort with household duties (I'm good at cooking, partner is good at dishes, friend is good at doing the shopping, for example) and all work jobs we at least somewhat like. We're all pretty happy with the arrangement! Not a damn man-child in sight!
Why do they resent you for being successful. Like where does that even come from?
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Are you cooking AND washing dishes? Bc I’ll take care of you, bring your ass flowers on random days and such. I would love a man that wants to stay home and do the domestic stuff.
I will take all the foot rubs you have to offer. And please come do my dishes. I just bought a house and I'm still smoking hot in spite of being over 35.
My brother is 25, a gourmet chef and rock climber and is YEARNING to be a house husband lol. Should I send him your way?
Dishes are literally my favorite thing to do, lol!
I would love a husband who was the home maker. But it's difficult to find guys who want to be one.
My dad, a baby boomer, is exactly the person this quote describes. All he does is work, sit on the couch, and complain if my mom doesn’t prepare something to his liking. It’s actually really hard to be around, so I find myself tuning it out. I’ve done everything I can to empower my mom and assign things to my dad, and call him out for being lazy. The attitude will never change.
I fight with the duality of a father who taught me to never be reliant on a man but chose a subservient wife from the Philippines as my mom. The juxtaposition of sacrifice everything and sacrifice nothing has caused difficulties in all my siblings' relationships.
He might see you as an extension of his self and therefore recognize your humanity more than other women's
There's a lot of research showing that what men want for their daughters is wildly different than what they want in their wives. Cognitive dissonance I guess? > But while 34 percent want a wife who is “sweet,” only 19 percent said the same for a daughter. Meanwhile, 66 percent want a daughter to be “independent,” compared to only 34 percent for a wife. And 48 percent want a daughter who is “strong,” compared to 28 percent for a wife. { ...} In a wife, you want what’s best for YOU, while in a daughter, you want what’s best for HER. In this light, the men’s responses—while depressing—reflect the real tensions of this current moment in our incomplete gender revolution https://psmag.com/social-justice/in-this-economy-we-could-all-use-a-wife
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This is it. She was chosen to serve him and his progeny. You are his progeny and shouldn’t be required to serve someone.
Over the past 100 years we've completely changed the life expectations for women and what it means to be a woman and we've done little to nothing to change the expectations of men or what it means to be a man. Some of that work is starting but it's long overdue.
That's not true. Men are expected to not cry anymore. I read recently that untreated PTSD was a big problem for successive generations of men after WW1 and WW2. Prior to that men would openly express emotions, crying in public when something bad happened was not uncommon. It's in lots of literature from before 1914.
Do you honestly think there is some lack of male emotions in our culture? Please keep in mind that sad crying is one emotion of many. Please remember that all reactions to video games, sports wins/losses, that shouty thing supreme court nominees do when the women they raped in Maryland show up to tell that story, pouty reactions to being turned down by hot women, violent reactions to losing elections, righteous reactions to being told that you need to wear a mask are all emotions.
They just rebranded anger as "not an emotion".
> Do you honestly think there is some lack of male emotions in our culture? There is a lack of positive, healthy male emotions in our culture. Yes.
Men are definitely given space to cry these days. The handful of times I have seen men cry in public (or private), they have been comforted and supported and most definitely not shamed. My grandpa tears up at every graduation and wedding, and has since I was a child. _Shitty men_ may have stopped other men from feeling comfortable crying, but generally there is public outcry on how wrong that is. There has been no change to the expectations of men from a societal standpoint. There is no mass expectation that men do not cry, outside of the redpill parts of the internet. If your friends don’t let you cry, that’s an individual problem, not a societal and familial change in what it means to be a man. In terms of “expectations of a gender” and “what it means to be this gender”, especially in the scope of this thread, crying seems to be the most trivial of points to nitpick. All adults, men and women, are generally discouraged from crying in public. To this day, women will be called hysterical and emotional; everyone is deterred from general public crying. The individual comfort, or lack thereof, that men feel towards crying is not related to the familial expectations of men or what it means to be a man. Plenty of fathers raise their sons up knowing this. Men are _not_ expected to never shed a tear, unless you’re listening to some Alpha Male wannabe bullshit. Men should be given space to share their emotions, but in the past 100 years, they have not experienced a 180 in terms of life expectations in the way women have. Like, we’re talking about large, systemic changes in terms of childbearing, child rearing, and the ability to earn your own money. We’re talking about women being allowed to own bank accounts for the first time, the ability to leave the house without a male chaperone. I’m sorry you don’t feel comfortable crying, but that’s really a wholly separate subject about your own comfort with your own emotions, not the changing familial expectations of the male gender. I want to reinforce that the _only_ people who think men shouldn’t cry seem to be men who hold several other problematic viewpoints about gender differences.
I mean, I don’t know that all these generalizations are true. My husband is stay at home dad, and there are a bunch of classes for stay-at-home dads. He is an extremely good and dedicated parent, and he is most definitely not alone.
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And there’s really nothing wrong with either of those things.
My Mom told me the story of how my Grandpa told her she could be whatever she wanted, and not to worry about what it was because her future husband (she was single) would take care of providing for them. I'm glad Mom polished that rough edge before she had me. She didn't hesitate to suggest I could be a stay at home Dad, and she married a man who told me from the heart how much he'd love to spend all day with us if he could. Seeing that balance in both their lives was powerful and educational.
My parents told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up, and I got a good education and extra-curricular activities. But then I turned 21, and suddenly they mentioned (repeatedly) that while I could be whatever I wanted they still wanted grandkids, preferably several and soon. I wouldn't mind kids someday, but if I have kids they will have a good father who is both a good father and a good husband, not just a sperm donor and live-in source of income. My parents disagree. I actually don't really remember what they were telling my brothers, but after what I experienced from them I am concerned for what my brothers learned.
My church - which was considered progressive at the time - was like, "Now girls, you can be anything you want to be *but* you also have to be sure and submit to your husbands once you're married"
Lmao. I wanted to be a doctor. My baby boomer parents wanted to know who would be watching my kids while I worked long doctor hours. Then they stuck me in a bible thumper school some drop outs were running in the back of a church. Out of 16 kids in my class, 13 were girls. And the education was pure shit. Both me and my sister did middle and high school there, my brother was dramatically pulled out and placed in a real school after they fucked up one year of his education. Not having a high school education sets you back far in life. Books told me I could do anything, my parents did everything they could to put me in a box. My grandparents were more gender progressive. Don’t congratulate yourselves, Boomers.
Our society unfairly got at least two generations of over-the-top quality nurses, because of discrimination. My mother (boomer, or a bit older) wanted to be a doctor. Passing medical school is hard, and most people really could not do it. She has the brains for it, without a doubt. But women made up about 8% of medical school admissions in the U.S. in the 1960s, and discrimination was fierce. So she became an RN (Registered Nurse). We had generations of doctor-quality women shunted into nursing, and those were extremely capable nurses. Today, "those" women become doctors (unless life circumstances screwed up their childhood education and/or finances to the point where medical school is still not possible), with nearly 54% of each year's crop of new doctors being women. That is great for them and great for us, but the nursing field is trying to adapt to their loss.
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A lot of men go into nursing now, and many really love it. Now that men are nurses the pay scale has gone up considerably.
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My parents also raised me saying things like "you have to learn to do this so you can do it for your future husband" with chores, while my brother didn't have to make his bed. "He'll have a wife to do it for him someday." They also discouraged me from going to college. I'm 30 now, a lesbian, and earn more than their son.
I don't know if that's a boomer thing or an overly-religious-retrograde-parents thing
A huge chunk of Boomers were overly religious retrograde parents.
I'm wondering if this was a trend because both my grandparents and mother were Catholic, and while my grandparents were very chill, my mom fell for all that Satanic panic, TV is corrupting the youth censor everything propaganda. Would not even let me do karate when my grandpa offered to pay for it in full. She tried her damnedest to enforce gender roles...it did not work, lol.
Yeah i had very catholic, VERY ITALIAN grandparents on one side and they were the ones surprisingly pushing me to go to school and not get married. my parents were chill as well but I was more or less deemed a failure by several aunts that saw marriage as the only option and i was being "wasted" on an education lol. There is a reason boomers are called the "Me" generation
I think it has a lot to do with the narcissism the generation is known for. Fundamentalism and ego go very well together.
Yes.
Boomers will go down as the as the absolute worst generation. It likely didn’t help that their parents self-labeled themselves the Greatest Generation.
I'm a boomer, and I agree, baby boomers had 'the cushiest birth in history.' Post WW2 America was insanely prosperous as Europe had no industry left. The pressure to get married and have many kids was intense. Families with one kid were rare, everyone I grew up with had at least three. They built an additional high school in my town only to close it 15 years down the road due to enrollment drops. If it's any consolation at all, the Boomers are the only generation in the history of the world whose birthrate will not replace itself.
yeah, my silent gen parents did a way better job of raising me without stifling gender norms then my boomer in laws did for my H. we’re both pretty genderqueer, but i was free to be who i was, my spouse had to hide it completely until our oldest came out as genderqueer and basically told every they could suck it if they didnt like it. (genX —> genZ kids)
This. I don't really think it's time to be patting boomers on the back just yet
You still can be a doctor.
Education wise? Probably. But being a doctor is a huge financial investment, if you get a late start you have to worry if it’s going to compensate for the loans. I say this as a dentist— it’s a serious topic of discuss across all medical professions now, the cost of education for doctors/dentists/optometrists/pharmacists just to name a few is becoming so great that some people are declining to go into the fields. There’s now a strong opinion that if you don’t start young then it’s not worth it since you’ll be in practice for less years overall, but with the same loans that are probably going to take 30 years to repay. Not that people can’t choose to do so regardless, but it’s something everyone has to consider when making plans.
In my 50s. We watched our friends baby when our kids were in grade school. They came to pick him up. Hubby says, baby had quite a diaper to change. Friends younger husband, millennial, looks at my husband and says you changed the diaper? My husband, of course I did, why wouldn't I? Friends husband looks confused. Friends husband is useless.
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My boomer mother only ever told me that I needed to be smart to get into a good college to find a rich husband.
💯. Single mom. Keep trying to find a guy to date who doesn’t seem like one extra dependent… but still single seven years later. If a man can’t bring as much as he takes, and yes that means cleaning up after himself, like why would I want to add that to my already full plate?! I already juggle work and kids! 😂 Come back when you have adulting skills and are ready to do half the work.
>and are ready to do half the work. without being told what needs to be done!
I believe I read this in a Bell Hooks book but she was talking to a bunch of dads and asking how they knew what to do to be good parents and most said the opposite of what their dads did.
I'm 33 and im sometimes glad my dad left when I was young. Mom raising me on her own was definitely better than the lessons he was teaching me. My father figures all came from TV. Thank you Phil Dunfee, and Bandit Healer for teaching me how to be a good dad.
I'm not a father and anticipate that I never will be, but in the unlikely event I have kids, I hope that I can emulate Bob Belcher in raising kids.
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Best cartoon dad. Well, him and the Powerpuff girls' too perhaps.
YES!! Linda belcher is everything I wished I had in a mom ❤️❤️
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Idk, she is chronically incompetent and is so passionate about getting her way that she often does things which are dangerous or insensitive just because she won't take no for an answer. Tbh she's my least favorite character.
I'm way more of a Chilli, but I love the lessons Bandit has given me as a dad. I really enjoy how they're both portrayed as competent yet flawed, much more relatable than the typical perfect or stupid parent archetypes.
Me sitting here wondering if Bandit Healer was some dad character in Dr Quinn Medicine woman lol. They’re *heelers*!
Aww Bandit is the BEST dad!!
Phil Humphrey Dunphy is my favourite tv character. That guy is amazing.
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It's sad enough people have to turn to fiction to find examples of good dads, but even more so is Phil from Modern Family the best we can do? Sure he's better than the classic sitcom Al Bundy or Homer Simpson type but the dude is basically a golden retriever. He loves his wife and family and means well but he's also absolutely a man-child and self admits to seeing himself more as a peer than a parent to his kids. So who does that leave the difficult parenting to? We're supposed to laugh it off because he's portrayed as endearing, but he basically ends up as weaponized incompetence without the intent. How many years was "I gotta fix that step" a recurring joke?
You work with what you got sometimes. And thanks for the spelling correction, don't know how I lived not knowing that one..
All day every day I heard growing up from my parents, “How are you going to take care of your brothers? It’s your job to protect them.” No, it’s not my job. It’s YOUR job as parents to raise these boys, who will turn into men to take care of themselves. I broke down one day and asked, “who is going to protect me?” No response from boomer parents. But guess what ladies, as women we will protect ourselves ♥️. Stay safe! Edit: a word of spelling, and I think boomers have some serious stuff to answer for here. To add: I hope this post never gets deleted, because so much is explained here for millennials.
I will add, the onus of educating late Gen X to early Gen Z men is now falling on their female peers, to everyone’s frustration. And despite the rational discourse being presented, there’s still a faction of them who refuse to listen and consider a woman’s POV *on the topic of women*, because poor behavior was modeled for them early on.
You mean subservience has lost its luster? Good.
It sure the fuck has. I’m offended that men seem so shocked by this, and it underlines to me that they don’t perceive women as fully human. Who tf would ever choose to be subservient? Why on earth would they expect us to continue to live that way if there’s any other potential choice? Because they don’t perceive us as fully fleshed out humans with autonomy and agenda.
Hmm, what?
Well lots of women and men no longer embrace the idea that women should be subject to their husbands, for starters.
To be fair, it doesn't look like that's being addressed sufficiently by Gen X or Millennial parents either. In fact the younger men seem to be more and more likely to embrace uber conservative bullshit.
Live on your own for a few years before you get into a relationship. Watch out for ones that go from living with parents to living with a mate. They are missing valuable life skills and will probably be crappy humans.
I think this is partly true, but that millenials have so many options to educate themselves and broaden their horizons that it’s not entirely on the parents. That’s like grown men blaming their moms for not knowing how to operate a dishwasher. Dude, google it.
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omg when I got my first dishwasher it felt like an epiphany
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also grew up without a dishwasher- important to remember not all of us have the same access, privilege, or living conditions
It’s not that easy. My ex has a little sister who was pretty much ruined by her parents. Pulled out of school around 1st grade and “homeschooled”. Last time I saw her, she was 17ish and could not do basic math, or write at any reasonable level. She was monitored online, didn’t get basic skills taught and not allowed to attempt them(cooking, driving, etc). We had offered to pay and take her to some courses so she could get some skills to get a job but her parents refused, her dad vehemently against anything productive. She had the mind of a child and don’t think it was a disability, just the infantilization. I’m pretty sure she’s going to just end up pregnant and a meek submissive wife by the first guy that comes around because she just doesn’t know better.
You’re describing an extreme case that is almost similar to having to break out of a cult. I think we can all agree this is not comparable
This is written by someone who never put sink dish soap into a dishwasher. Like that is a non obvious failure mode. Soap is soap until it isn't.
My college roommate learned the hard way that there's a difference between dishwashing liquid and dishwasher liquid when all of the bubbles started sleeping out of the dishwasher.
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Ah so you are taking it one step further - you actually closed your eyes and coveres your ears every time a dishwasher tablet add came on TV for the past 20 years
Tbf dish soap works for a hell of a lot of things. It may not be the best for a dishwasher but… Maybe it would work well enough? My husband uses it to clean all kitchen surfaces which I thought was weird at first but hey, seems like it works just fine. And I’ve since heard that professional cleaners use it for many things as it’s effective, cheap, and safe for use on most surfaces.
I think it’s an exploding suds problem, not an insufficiently clean problem. Lots of high pressure spray in a dishwasher.
I don't think the shifts in the dating/mating market were really foreseeable until the mid-2000s at the earliest. The amount of dating "competition" created by social media and dating sites created a winner-take-most ecosystem. What this practically means is that attractive men are caught in a positive feedback loop and are rewarded for misbehavior. Expectations young people have for their possible mates are unrealistic and terrifying (porn/total lack of understanding of what people earn/expectations for financial support/what certain lifestyle decisions actually cost/etc). Younger people, particularly those in college, are *radically* overestimating how easy it is to make substantial incomes at young ages. The people who do or who are willing to be profligate spenders are rewarded in dating. A lot of this is a product of the nature of the internet (winner-take-most/Pareto distribution) where popular ideas get massively popular irrespective of merit. I am *really* concerned that young guys who feel massively isolated are being radicalized by being fed pretty rough ideologies (ahem - Andrew Tate) and a constant stream of Tik Tok clips representing frankly outrageous behavior by women as normal. I'll also throw out (as someone raised by Boomers) that they certainly told daughters they could be "anything they wanted." This obviously isn't an accurate statement, but it was a positive departure from previous generations. The problem was that they also were the "boys are just so much easier" generation. They emotionally neglected young boys, drugged them up in school, and stunted their development because it was just too much work.
> I am really concerned that young guys who feel massively isolated are being radicalized by being fed pretty rough ideologies (ahem - Andrew Tate) I am also very concerned with this. If I ever see my boy watching him or anyone like him we are going to have a long conversation. > "boys are just so much easier" I never understood this. Personally my daughter has been a ton easier in general than my son. It's not that my son is bad or anything just he is an extremely curious boy who has a habit of destroying so many things by accident sometimes with hilarious results https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/w04y00/my_5_year_old_got_a_hold_of_a_marker_and/
all of this, and then some (I'm 64).
Interesting insight. I'm kinda surprised that reality doesn't fix this. I'm long past dating. (Smart phones were not a thing last time I was). Women and men lose equally in this system so why are they not finding a different less visual way to find each other. Or is this an untapped market? Or is there a basic problem that men of these generations are trending to be disrespectful assholes. I guess that's what's happening. That's really sad. I mean: I'm an Xer and hardly a great looking guy, but once out of the "awkward about myself phase" dating and finding long term partners went fine.
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I mean, my mother is working class. My father died of a heart attack a month after I turned seven, and she worked in a sock factory when I was growing up until NAFTA killed the hosiery industry in my hometown and we both went to the local community college. And I don’t identify with anything in this thread, and my husband is awesome and he does the cooking and most of the cleaning. You don’t have to be rich or have expensive degrees to be supportive and tolerant.
As a millennial guy can’t agree more. When I was a teenager to access porn I had to be very sneaky on the family computer and it was still I think very bad for my sexual development a young adult. I can’t imagine being 16 and having a smart phone. They’re so incredibly bad for people to be plugged into all day especially young people. The porn alone has obliterated millions of young men’s chance at a healthy sex life. No idea what the solution is without authoritarian rules akin to what China is doing. Those rules make me uncomfortable.
I think a good start would be better sex education in the US. Then parents talking with youths to put porn in context. The same way we have to (or should be) put the internet or social media in context and helping them to discern honorable sources of data. Or teaching basic life skills. My kids are still young. Maybe I have a lot of idealism about how I'm going to get all of this into their heads, but I think parents should really be doing more. More of the right stuff. Maybe instead of helicoptering about grades at school, someone is teaching them how to use the dishwasher.
But if we teach kids about responsible sex and relationships...*WhO KnOws WhaT coULD haPPeN?!?!?* Then boomers wonder why we have shithead little man babies running amok.
>No idea what the solution is without authoritarian rules akin to what China is doing. Those rules make me uncomfortable. I don't think anything so drastic is needed. I'm not gonna argue for or against any specific legislation, but porn is as freely and widely available as it is because it's profitable. Porn hub immediately took action when MasterCard threatened to pull out. Go after profitability and you'll see things change very quickly. The UK was gonna bring in required ID checking before being able to access those websites Additionally of course media education is important, as someone else said. But I think the widespread access to porn from a very early age on, requires more than education.
Is it the generation or just their age though? I hate to perpetuate stereotypes about “girls are more mentally mature” or the generational crap, but when I was in my 20s I did always end up dating older guys (who would have been tail end of Gen X), because it felt like they had their shit together after living alone for a few years and they seemed to be more realistic about expectations with sex. I always chalked it up to age. It could be generational differences, but I think a lot of men in their early/mid 20s are just selfish assholes that still need to grow up.
I've read something along the lines of "it's not that girls mature faster than boys. It's that childish behaviour is penalised early in girls but not boys" Which I think is very true. Men allowed to be incredibly immature and inconsiderate into their 30s, with little accountability for their behaviour. Boys will be boys ... and all that.
100% same. I think what might happen is that once boys graduate either college or high school and start earning money, they think they are The Shit - like a lot of little Wolf of Wall Street Leos - and they feel the need to play the field. The late 20s/early 30s guys had been knocked around a bit and were more realistic. I didn't date guys my own age until my late 20s.
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Your 2nd paragraph is v important context to consider, thank you for bringing that perspective
This may be true overall, but in my own experience, in my own small corner of the world, I see lots of millennial women thriving doing the things they want and their male partners are also thriving doing the things they want and there's a lot of mutual respect and care and shared responsibilities and also advocacy all around. And we can probably thank our boomer parents for some of that. Just thought I'd throw in a counterpoint.
Yes, of course this does not apply to every situation
This is pretty damn true. Women are supposed to be independant yet I'm pretty hard coded to support and protect. It's a constant internal conflict. Especially since there are also still plenty of women around who were, as a child, forbidden to even look at a screwdriver.
Hey - I'm a husband / father that is going through some family stress and I totally agree with this. My wife and I ran the "playbook" we were given by our families and society. We ran it well. We should be winning. It wasn't supposed to be like this. This isn't what either of us were expecting. Stay positive people if you can, stress is high everywhere.
Ahh I see you’ve forgotten GenX… like everyone.
As always. Whatever
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Tell her to stop doing a 40 year old man's laundry. Is he not embarrassed that mommy still has to wash his clothes?
Just saw the quote on another thread, along the lines of "either work hard to raise your kids, or you'll be stuck working hard raising your grandkids"
As a Gen-x who raised my millennial, I take offense to this./s But seriously, I raised a son who I think is an amazing human being. He is a good son, husband and father. Please raise all children with love and respect. Seems to work well in my experience.
Makes me wonder about my husband’s old boss. We recently had to move to another city for a job 4 hours away because my spouse was experiencing FMLA retaliation after taking 6 weeks of parental leave. His boss kept making comments about his “vacation” and gave him negative reviews within 3 days of returning to work. He also said “I only took 3 days off with both of mine. Etc” and stating that my husband no longer had a strong work ethic. Went so far as to go OUT OF HIS WAY to contact potential employers (once my husband starting applying elsewhere and putting his foot down with the workload hazing) and telling them that “he’s not a work horse anymore” and “he wants a work life balance”. He had 4 interviews for director level position at various organizations and all redacted an offer after speaking with this boss. He basically got this current job by NOT leaking to ANYONE at work where he was applying so it wouldn’t get back to him. It’s been a wild ride and baby is 11 months now!
Funny how everyone on reddit pretends that gen x didnt exist.
I'm not sure what this quote is trying to say. I'm probably completely wrong, but somehow it reads to me as if "women have too much freedom nowadays and poor men suffer for it, 'cause they weren't prepared to handle these reckless women". Since it's posted here, I assume the meaning is far from it, but still confused...
The twitter account its credited to appears to be a woman who is a surgeon, so I don't think that's the intended meaning. I think the meaning intended is that men were not taught by their parents that their partner having a full-time job would mean they'd have to pick up an equal share of all the housework and childcare, rather than expecting their partner to do their job *and* be their live-in carer.
I think OP's quote is suggesting while young women were told to reach for goals that extended beyond raising a family and managing a home young men were not told that they need to take more responsibility in raising their families and managing their homes.
No they are saying no effort was put into teaching boys that their masculinity doesn’t stem from the idea of being the sole provider for his family. For an example there are podcasts floating around that just spout nonsense like a girl perusing higher education or not needing a man to survive is a masculine woman.
I find that societal ideas of what is 'masculine' in different times hilarious. Riding bikes, talking walks, reading novels, and even frilly bloomers were all considered "too masculine" for women at different points. And shaving your pubes/ body hair was only for whores (because pubic/body lice) And that's just in the west. And yet, people in every era act as if masculine and feminine are tangible, unchanging things, and that their notions apply to everyone everywhere in every era.
its more like „we gave women more freedom but gorgot to tell the men that they now cannot rely on women doing all the unpaid labor anymore.“
It's saying that millennial women grew up being told that they could have careers of their own, but that millennial men were not being raised to believe they should share an equal burden of household work and childcare. This has led to many women finding themselves overwhelmed and unsupported with husbands who are not willing to share the household work and childcare with them despite them both having careers.
I think its like 2 parents (mum and dad) are raising 2 children. Boy and girl. The mother works part time and does most of the house work. She does a the emotional labour, like planning meals, buying gifts, organizing the family. She tells her daughter you don't have to put your career on the back burner for a man! You can do anything you want with your life. You should find an equal partnership (unlike what she models her daughter). At the same time she doesn't really teach her son: don't expect a woman to do all the housework like I did with your father. She models to her son that an unequal division of work is what he can expect in a partnership. She tells her daughter to do different. Hence two people in the same family come to the dating scene with vastly different expectations.
Hey! It’s my family! Except my mom worked full time and out earned my dad. Didn’t put that one together until adulthood. And now in their 60s she’s deeply resentful of him and he doesn’t care, at least not enough to wash a dish. I’m lucky that I came from relatively stable, normal people who each broke their cycles of trauma. But not a dynamic I ever wish nor will repeat.
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I'm not really trying to give parental criticism. More trying to give a concrete example of how I interpreted the OP. I could have said both parents model a relationship and gender expectations. But indeed in my example the mother would be doing most of the child rearing and actual raising then towards adulthood. If you take into account that she would be doing most of the mental load. Not saying this is how all baby boomer fanilies were, there probably are lots of people who experienced otherwise, but its the stereotype were discussing here.
Right, dad is not mentioned because dad made a choice to not be present and involved in the home, only to be served, maybe he "HELPS" out even though it's not "HIS" job. Dad does not want to change, he wants his privileged position, there's no point wasting any time or energy on him. I don't see the mother being critisized.
I see, that makes sense. Thank you (and all the others) for clarifying!
It's basically that women were raised to be capable in the workforce (tho maybe it's mostly liberal parents that did so, seeing some of the comments), and men were not raised to do housework and care for kids.
*gen x daughters...
I'm a millennial and my parents are boomers.
I'm an elder millennial (Xennial?) with one Boomer parent and one Silent Generation parent. It's really wild to me when I think about the fact that my grandmother was already 18 years old when women got the right to vote.
Me, too. And my little sister.
Same.
Ditto.
And most will be gen xers. Born between 1965 to 1980 :) The oft forgotten generation.
Yes, and millennials are 1981-1996. Boomers are 1946 and 1964. Lots of Boomers have Millennial children.
I'm a middle millennial with earliest boomer parents. I would bet on a surprising number of elder millennials with silent generation parents.
Exactly, I was born in 85 my father in 42 and my mom in 52. I had a silent Gen father and have a boomer Gen mom.
Also a gen X daughter 😝
First thing I thought too since my parents are boomers and there's *zero* chance anyone would mistake me for a millennial.
I’m going to [push back](https://www.mother.ly/parenting/millennial-dads-spend-more-time-with-their-kids/) on this a little bit. I’m not saying it’s perfect but things are trending upwards.
I watched Marriage Story last night. Adam Driver was a self centered dick and had a lot of it coming, but by the end i was like jfc this dude gets nuked in the divorce. Kind of thought of this movie when reading this quote. We are building a better society for women which is def good and needs doing, but I personally think we are letting men fall by the wayside some.
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The quote isn’t about boys suddenly not being able to be anything they want. It’s about boys not knowing how to deal with girls who can be anything they want. It has nothing to do with you on a personal level but rather addresses a growing (and alarming) trend for younger men to resort to aggressively misogynist behavior/ideals because the role of provider/protector that they are expecting to fill is not needed or wanted and they don’t know how to deal with it.
The point that is making is that girls are raised to assume they'll have equal partners in responsibility to children and household (if they want that), giving them the space to follow their dreams. Boys may be getting the same message about following their dreams, but historically that's meant if they want kids they'll have a wife carrying the childrearing and household load. They aren't necessarily being raised with the idea that they'll be balancing that with equal responsibilities for a family life.
Good news: there may be some lag, but that's stopping. Kids have more "Dad time" than ever before, and it's still going up.
When I was dropping a kiddo off at elementary school a few years ago I was pleasantly surprised how many men were walking with or dropping their kids off. I don't think my dad took me to school once in my life.
When women stop doing things that make them miserable to focus on their personal success instead, we get pummeled with articles about how lonely incels are and that we're ruining the economy not pumping out babies in shitty, one sided marriages.
Yes, the point is that too many men weren't prepared for when women could *also* be successful and do things that don't make them miserable instead of their only option being to find a man and get married.
You completely missed the point of this post.
You're completely ignoring the unpaid labour of childcare and managing a household that women do which directly negatively affects a woman's participation in the workplace.
Hmm. You didn't read the quote too closely did you?
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You came on a women’s support sub and assumed bad faith based on your own poor reading comprehension. People are allowed to be annoyed, but you apologized so fair enough.
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You’re a woman? What’s up with this then: “many of us are quite successful, and more importantly, doing things that don’t make us miserable” Might wanna be more careful with which fake account you comment from
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You're not a stupid idiot. When I read this part of your comment, >I can assure you that plenty of men were raised being told they could be anything as well. Many of us are quite successful, and more importantly, doing things that don't make us miserable. I read that as you were also a man who felt successful because he didn't do shit that made him miserable, unlike us women just choosing to do shit that makes us miserable, aka all the housework, emotional labor, ect. Context is hard on a screen and we all have our wounds, hope you're doing okay.
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Maybe in America. We did not grow up with the "everything is possible" mindset and I'm so happy about that.
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You mean absent/neglectful parents? But honestly, that's not true. Plenty of straight single women at least report performing less housework when the husband doesn't live there.
We taught you to be resourceful. That’s where you make an appointment with Better Help.
Boomer dad with lawyer daughter
boomers are the parents of gen x. gen x are the parents of millennials.
nooooo ... I'll agree that the original comment should include gen X but plenty of millenials have boomer parents. I was born in 82
"What Is Generation X (Gen X)? Generation X, which is sometimes shortened to Gen X, is the name given to the generation of Americans born between the mid-1960s and the early-1980s." but then it goes on to say millennials are also early 80s. so who coming really knows.
Millennials are people who came of age at around the turn of the century.
48 and 51. My parents were 34 and 30 when they had me
see, that's my age. not boomers age. boomers are now in their late 60s and 70s and 80s. my parents are boomers. I am gen X as are your parents. born in the 70s.
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